Kunstkamera

Peter I founded this in 1714 as a cabinet of curiosities and opened it to the public free, reportedly offering visitors a drink to get them through the door - the first museum in the country. The building on the Neva was finished in 1734 with a tower for an observatory. It is now the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, with large collections from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, and the ethnographic halls are the bulk of it. What people come for is the original cabinet: Peter's anatomical collection, much of it bought from the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch, consisting largely of preserved human fetuses and infants with developmental abnormalities, prepared with a skill that was extraordinary for the 1700s and displayed in jars much as they were then. It is a genuinely difficult room and the museum does not soften it. The Great Gottorf Globe, a three-metre sphere you can sit inside, is in the tower.

History

Peter the Great saw cabinets of curiosities on his Grand Embassy of 1697-1698 and began buying for his own; his collection was first shown to the public at the Summer Palace in 1714, the date the museum counts as its founding. After large purchases from Albertus Seba in 1716 and Frederik Ruysch in 1717 it outgrew that space, and Peter had the Kunstkamera built on the spit of Vasilievsky Island to designs by Georg Johann Mattarnovy (Wikipedia, Kunstkamera).

What you'll find

• Peter's anatomical cabinet - preserved specimens from the Ruysch collection, shown as in the 1700s.
• The Gottorf Globe - a three-metre globe with seating inside, up in the tower.
• The ethnographic halls - large collections from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
• The 1734 building - the first purpose-built museum in the country, on the Neva.

When to go

All year. Two to three hours. Closed Mondays; queues form at weekends.

Before you go

The anatomical room is distressing for many visitors, especially the infant specimens, and there is no way to reach the rest of the museum without knowing it is there. Labelling is largely Russian. The building is old, crowded and the stairs are narrow. The globe is entered in small timed groups.

Nearby

The Rostral Columns and the Hermitage across the Neva are within a short walk.

Key facts